Advanced Capture Management

Classroom Training on June 19-20, 2012 in Rockville, MD

Masterfully facilitate brainstorming sessions such as Black Hats, Win Strategy Sessions, and CONOPS workshops; perform advanced competitive analysis; create advantageous teaming arrangements; apply formulas to solution development; and much more. The course also focuses on measuring and improving cost-efficiency and effectiveness of the capture team.

This course takes capture management to the next level showcasing what does it take to maximize win probability and mastermind the most effective win strategy using cutting edge techniques.

This course is for those who have experience with capture management. It builds advanced skills by offering deeper understanding of theory and practice of capture management, expands abilities through best practices-based methodologies, and provides tool sets for immediate implementation.

It is an interactive 2-day workshop that is 50 percent lecture, 30 percent exercises and case studies, and 20 percent discussion.

Date: June 19-20, 2012 (Tuesday-Wednesday). 8:30am - 5:00pm (continental breakfast and afternoon snack included).
Location: Metro Park North Business Center, 7361 Calhoun Place, Suite 560, Rockville, MD 20855.
(check our Visitor Guide for location details, driving directions, nearby hotels and restaurants, and more).
Course completion: By attending this class, you will receive 3 CEUs towards your APMP accreditation, or 3 PDUs towards your PMP. At the end of this course you will get a Certificate of Completion.

Who should attend this course: The course is for capture managers, proposal managers looking to expand their professional competencies, business developers, business managers and owners, sales executives, and project personnel who would like to gain understanding of capture to help their company grow. If you cannot afford to waste another minute or dollar writing a losing proposal yet again, would like to get out of a reaction mode, become proactive, and win more - this class is for you.

Learning objectives: Upon course completion, the participants will have learned and be able to put into practice:

• Understanding how advanced capture techniques offer an edge in a competition.
• Building strong and lasting relationships with government customers.
• Shaping opportunities and requirements.
• Gathering intelligence like a professional analyst, and distilling it to drive capture strategy and proposal development.
• Facilitating win strategy development sessions.
• Developing a solid value proposition.
• Turning advanced win strategies into action.
• Unseating incumbents and defending one's position as an incumbent.
• Using seven most useful competitive analysis techniques.
• Understanding Price to Win and IDIQ competitive analysis.
• Facilitating Black Hat sessions that produce actionable intelligence.
• Applying strategic principles to teaming.
• Navigating the small business subcontracting rules to benefit from socioeconomic programs and avoid hidden trouble.
• Negotiating binding teaming agreement to protect bidder s' interests.
• Developing an executive summary, management, technical, risk, price strategy, past performance, resumes, staffing, and other approaches.
• Pre-staging of capture materials for proposal development.
• Focusing the capture effort and measuring its effectiveness.

Course curriculum: Here are some of the topics we will cover in this course.

Day 1 highlights

Module 1: Introduction
- Introductions and learning objectives.
- Recap: overview of the capture process for an advanced big-picture perspective.

 

Module 2: Creating lasting customer relationships
- How to create strong and lasting relationships with government customers.
- Advanced techniques for building an effective rapport with government customers
- Techniques for finding connections and engaging the customer before and after the communication channels close.
- Mind set for achieving the most results with government customers.
- How to influence the RFP and shape customer requirements.
- Organizing key information about the customer and measuring customer relationship.
- Engaging with people with a high-level influence.
- Legal aspects of customer relationship building – or how to keep yourself and your company out of trouble.
Case Study: Determine correct and incorrect courses of actions as applicable to a real-life scenario.

 

Module 3: Gathering intelligence like a pro, focusing time and effort on information needed to win
- Differences between data, information, knowledge, and actionable intelligence.
- Sources of information and degrees of their reliability.
- Where to find the right information on the web, and how to search for data like a professional analyst.
- How to harvest valuable intelligence from customer artifacts.
- How to distill information from open sources.
- How to analyze the data to make the right capture-related conclusions.
- Validating and testing data.
- A system for documenting intelligence that's most useful for the proposal team.
Exercise: Research and analyze an opportunity based on the information provided.

 

Module 4: Developing a win strategy that packs a punch
- Mastery in facilitating win strategy development sessions.
- Finer points of the win strategy development process.
- Key components of a strategy.
- Developing a value proposition.
- How to test quality of the win strategy.
- Types of successful win strategies.
- Special type of strategy: effective use of ghosting.
- Strategy for unseating incumbents and defending one's position as an incumbent.
- Taking your win strategies to the next level.
- Win strategy white paper and its mapping to the action items and solution development.
- Developing and tracking strategic action plans.
Exercise: Conduct a win strategy development session simulation.

Day 2 highlights

Module 5: Advanced competitive analysis to exploit competition's shortfalls and neutralize their strengths
- Seven most used competitive analysis techniques and their practical application.
- Applying intelligence gathering techniques to competitive analysis.
- Competitive analysis for IDIQs with multiple bidders.
- Price to Win analysis.
- A practical approach to conducting a Black Hat session that produces actionable intelligence.
- Turning competitive intelligence into strategic decisions and actions.
Case Study: Application of competitive analysis tools.

 

Module 6: Teaming strategies
- Strategic considerations that go into forming a team.
- When it is best to move forward with a teaming arrangement and when to wait.
- How to avoid diluting the scope and dealing with the risk of having too many teammates.
- How to choose between exclusive and non-exclusive teaming.
- Effective teaming techniques and precautions for teaming with competitors.
- Small business subcontracting.
- Understanding size rules and potential disqualifiers from bidding.
- Elements of a binding teaming agreement to protect bidder's interests.
- How to negotiate for success and follow the government contracting and subcontracting negotiating template.
- Negotiation tactics and appropriate responses.
Exercise: Compare strategic teaming scenarios and determine the most appropriate paths of action.

 

Module 7: Solution development
- Executive summary.
- Management solution.
- Risk management approach development.
- Technical approach development.
- Developing a price strategy.
- Advance preparation of past performance, resumes, staffing, and other solutions
- Pre-staging of proposal materials.
Exercise: Prepare risk matrix. Walk through the solution development checklists.

 

Module 8: Capture process management
- Conducting gate reviews focused on results and measurements.
- Metrics for capture effectiveness.
Discussion: Techniques applicability to participants' organizations.

 

Module 9: Summary
- Additional resources and bibliography.
- Summary.
- Recap.

About the instructor: Olessia Smotrova-Taylor is the President and CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc. She is a currently practicing capture and proposal manager who has won more than $17 Billion in new business. As one of the proposal industry leaders, she is on the Board of Directors of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals' (APMP) National Capital Area (NCA) chapter and is the editor and chair of the APMP NCA Executive Summary e-zine that won 2010 APMP Communications Award. She regularly presents at the APMP's international and other conferences, roundtables, and proposal boot camps, and runs popular training webinars on business development. She is currently designing and preparing to teach a Masters-level course in proposal development for Stevens Institute of Technology. She has 16 years of experience in proposal and capture management, marketing, and communications. She is a prolific author, speaker, trainer, and blogger, and is well-known in the global proposal community. Her self-study course, Executive Summary Secrets, sells worldwide. Prior to starting her own consulting company, she won business for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and wrote for the Financial Times of London.

Seating is limited. Do not delay registering.

Fee and registration: For team discounts please change quantity of attendees at the checkout and click "Recalculate" to get the discount. Register 3 weeks before class date and receive $100 off per attendee as an EARLYBIRD discount!

• $1390 per one attendee ($1290 if registered 3 weeks before class date).
• $1250 per attendee when registering a team of 3 or more ($1150 if registered 3 weeks before class date), discounts apply at the checkout.

For additional questions please call 301-384-3350 during normal business hours. If you'd like to pay by invoice please send an email to service@ostglobalsolutions.com (NOTE: the payment must be received prior to the course start date).

Cancellations and rescheduling policy: Cancellation notification must be received 10 business days prior to the training date. Upon notification, your registration fee will be refunded less a $100 non-refundable processing fee. Any cancellations beyond the 10 business days are non-refundable, but the course fee can be applied towards another training course, webinar, or an OST Global Solutions training product. No refunds will be made for the cancellation of a rescheduled course. Attendee substitutions may be made at any time. Payment must be received prior to the course date. No-shows are liable for the full class fee.

P. S. If you think of someone else who could benefit from this course, please forward this invitation to them!